### 324

Drawing upon your Animal Mastery Discipline, you focus on the distant Chagarashi and command it to fall asleep. The creature slows its pace but it does not drop to the ground as you were expecting it to. Your Sixth Sense detects that this creature is unusually resistant to your psychic command. It shakes its head and emits a shriek of frustration before turning its feral gaze in your direction. On seeing you and your party it reacts in an instant. Swiftly, it turns about and lopes away through the trees in the direction of the roadblock.

‘I must stop it getting away,’ you shout to your companions. ‘If it makes it to the roadblock, we’ll soon have more than one of them to deal with.’

You spur your horse to the gallop and charge at the fleeing Chagarashi. The creature panics and collides face first with a tree trunk in its desperation to evade your swift and sudden approach. Reeling from the impact with the tree, drunkenly it turns to face you as you bear down on it. You unsheathe your Kai Weapon and raise it in readiness to strike the beast a killing blow.

Chagarashi Scout (stunned): COMBAT SKILL 34 ENDURANCE 36

Due to the speed of your attack, you can only engage in one round of combat with this enemy before the momentum of your charging horse carries you past it.

If you kill the Chagarashi in this single round of combat, turn to 267.

If you do not kill the Chagarashi outright with your single blow, turn to 142.

If you lose more ENDURANCE points than the Chagarashi in this single round of combat, turn to 88.